Two
important phenomena, similar in nature and yet opposed to each other, which
have not yet attracted the attention of anybody, are now manifesting themselves
in Asiatic Turkey, namely the awakening of the Arab nation and the concealed
effort of the Jews to reestablish the ancient monarchy of Israel on a grand
scale. These two movements are destined to a continuous struggle, until one of
the two prevails over the other. On the final outcome of this struggle between
these two peoples, representing two opposing principles, will depend the
destiny of the entire world.

By 1914, if not earlier, politically engaged Arab nationalists in Greater Syria agreed with Azuri that no accommodation with Zionism was possible. Any further Jewish settlement and nation-building, they concluded, would be harmful to the prospects of an Arab Muslim Palestine. One of these leaders, Haqqi Bey al-‘Azm, argued that “by employing means of threats and persecutions – and it is this last method which we must employ – by prodding the Arab population into destroying their farms and setting fire to their colonies, by forming gangs to execute these projects,” the Zionists could be compelled to leave Palestine. One hundred years later this logic still shapes the strategies and tactics of Fatah, Hamas, and the Ayatollah Khamenei.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1935. Jabotinsky Institute.

That the Arabs were determined to oppose Jewish nation-building and preserve the Arab character of Palestine as part of the dar-al-Islam, should not have come as a surprise to the Zionists. No people have ever voluntarily consented to sharing their land with another people, even one with deep historical and religious ties to it. Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of
Revisionist (right-wing) Zionism, unlike the Labor (left-wing) Zionists, had no illusions about this. “Any native people,” Jabotinsky insisted,
“views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the
complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but
even a new partner.” Jabotinsky warned that Zionism could succeed only by confronting and pushing back against the opposition of the Palestinian Arabs.

We
cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for
Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement
being reached. So that all those who regard such an agreement as a condition
sine qua non for Zionism may as well say “non” and withdraw from Zionism.

There
is not one nation in the world that would accept voluntarily and of its own
desire that its position should be changed in a manner which will have an
effect on its rights and prejudice its interests. . . . We as a nation are
human beings with our own culture and civilization and we feel as any other
nation would feel. It will have to be imposed on us by force.

Since the Palestinian Arabs would violently resist
the Jewish return to Zion, the Zionist halutzim (pioneers) would have to respond with “an iron wall
of Jewish bayonets.”

Britain’s Peel Commission, the first body
to recommend a two-state solution, showed great insight when it explained the intractable nature of the
conflict in words that apply just as much in 2016 as they did in 1937:

An
irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the
narrow bounds of one small country. About 1,000,000 Arabs are in strife, open
or latent, with some 400,000 Jews. There is no common ground between them. The Arab
community is predominantly Asiatic in character, the Jewish community
predominantly European. They differ in religion and in language. Their cultural
and social life, their ways of thought and conduct, are as incompatible as
their national aspirations. These last are the greatest bar to peace. Arabs and
Jews might possibly learn to live and work together in Palestine if they would
make a genuine effort to reconcile and combine their national ideals and so
build up in time a joint or dual nationality. But this they cannot do. The War
and its sequel have inspired all Arabs with the hope of reviving in a free and
united Arab world the traditions of the Arab golden age. The Jews similarly are
inspired by their historic past. They mean to show what the Jewish nation can
achieve when restored to the
land of its birth. National assimilation between Arabs and Jews is thus ruled
out. In the Arab picture the Jews could only occupy the place they occupied in
Arab Egypt or Arab Spain. The Arabs would be as much outside the Jewish picture
as the Canaanites in the old land of Israel. The National Home, as we have said
before, cannot be half-national. In these circumstances to maintain that
Palestinian citizenship has any moral meaning is a mischievous pretence.
Neither Arab nor Jew has any sense of service to a single State.

The commissioners concluded that “this
conflict was inherent in the situation from the outset.” And for both internal
and external reasons – the intensification of Jewish and Arab nationalism in
Palestine, the rise of Nazi Germany and the persecution of Jews in Europe – it
would only get worse. “The conflict will go on, the gulf between Arabs and Jews
will widen.”

The world – the Western and Islamic
worlds that is – has a most unhealthy and irrational obsession with Zionism, the Jewish people, and the Jewish state. An ocean of ink has been spilled over the past hundred years
– and terabytes of cyberspace filled up these days – on the existential
conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs.In fact the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict claims a far larger share of the world’s
attention than it deserves. Geopolitically it’s not that important; “a
20th century problem surrounded by 21st century chaos,” in the words of one diplomat. Indeed, the fate
of Israel and the Palestinians is far less important to the geostrategic
interests of the United States than events elsewhere in the Middle East, East
Asia, and beyond. Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer is right when he asks “can it be proven that it would make a substantive –
vice emotional – difference to U.S. security if . . . every Palestinian killed
every Israeli, or vice versa . . . ?” The “brutal but correct” answer says
Scheuer is that it doesn’t. Ethno-religious communal conflicts, like that
between Israel and the Palestinians, “evoke sympathy and stir emotion,” but
none of them, “regardless of who wins, endanger U.S. interests.”

Ah, but there’s the rub. While Scheuer
overstates his case – Israel, as General David Petraeus points out, does have strategic value as a
stable nation with an advanced economy and a powerful military that shares
American cultural and political values in a part of the world that is
increasingly unstable and dysfunctional – the American people do have
a considerable historical and emotional investment
in Israel.Ever since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Americans have seen themselves as the “New Israel.”“Come, let us declare in Zion the work of the Lord our God,” proclaimed the Pilgrim leader William Bradford, quoting the prophet Jeremiah.Adherents of the Calvinist faith, and this includes Puritans and Jacksonians, gave their children Hebrew names (Abraham, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, Abigail, Rachel, Esther, Sarah, Dina, etc., etc.,) and bestowed upon the New World such biblical place names as Shiloh, Bethel, Bethlehem, Jericho, and New Canaan. Preachers and pamphleteers portrayed the American Revolution as a reenactment of the biblical Exodus: the Continental Army became the “army of Israel” under the command of the providentially chosen George Washington, the Moses who led the thirteen colonies out of bondage to “Pharaoh” George III, through the wilderness of war, to the promised land of independence. The Reverend Abiel Abbot announced in a 1799 sermon: “It has often been remarked that the people of the United States come nearer to a parallel with Ancient Israel, than any other nation upon the globe. Hence Our American Israel is a term frequently used; and common consent allows it apt and proper.”

Early Americans were among the first Zionists. In 1819 John Adams wrote to the Jewish American writer and politician Mordecai Manuel Noah: “Farther I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites . . . & marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the dominion of it. For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.”Jacksonians tend to identify with Israel, ancient and modern. Nineteenth-century Jacksonians saw themselves as Israelites engaged in the holy work of winning the land from the Native American Canaanites. While fighting the Seminoles in Florida in 1818, Andrew Jackson declared that his soldiers were “like the Iseralites of old in the wilderness.” Jackson believed his army acted as “the hand of heaven . . . pointed against the exciters of this war,” on a mission to scatter the enemy “over the whole face of the Earth.” Present-day Jacksonians admire Israeli strength and resolve and view the Jewish state as a valuable ally in the war against radical Islam. They also see Israel as a valiant David that shares American values, surrounded by a sea of Arab Muslim Goliaths whose social, cultural, and political mores leave Jacksonians baffled, whose states and societies are in meltdown, and whose embrace of jihadist terrorism places them beyond the pale of civilization and renders them enemies of the United States.Israel is the source of the Abrahamic
faiths that claim the loyalty of at least half of mankind. Though small in
number as a people the contributions of the Jews to world civilization is
immense. (Though, as Yuval Noah Harari points out, Judaism as a religion has had a very minor impact on civilization, other than as the source of the ethical monotheism universalized by Christianity and Islam.) And so the historical and emotional importance of Israel and the Jews
to America and the world guarantee that Israel’s actions and destiny will remain
at the center of the world’s stage. (See, for example the current issue of Foreign Affairs, cover shown below.)

Of course when it comes to Israel and the Jews it’s
just not possible for most observers to be fair and
balanced, or engage in calm, reasoned discourse. Israel and the Jews push too
many hot buttons for too many people – religious, historical, cultural,
psychological, and political – for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Friends
and foes of Israel, living in alternate realities, committed with passionate intensity to uncompromising positions, engage
in take-no-prisoners ideological jousts that inevitably devolve into incoherent paroxysms of righteous anger and rage.
(And yes, most of the anger and rage against Israel, these days largely on the Left, isdriven by anti-Semitism. Walter Russell Mead calls this new incarnation of Jew-hatred the “Israel Outrage Industry.” See: Helen Thomas.) There is simply too much historical and emotional baggage for all involved.

The conflicts of the twenty-first century
are shaping up, as strategic analyst Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters predicted,
to be “wars of blood and faith.” This is true of the civil war in Syria, where an estimated 470,000 people have been killed, and
similar conflicts across the developing world, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
and even America’s post-9/11 war with radical Islam. Jacksonian America is
after all a folk community that embodies the blood and faith element of
American life (just listen to Toby Keith). These wars are driven by the existential issues of tribal and
religious identity: Who am I and who is God? Is God a kind, loving, and
merciful father, or is he a harsh, hate-filled, and punitive tyrant? “Will the
god of love and mercy triumph over the god of battles?” Colonel Peters asks. Millions
will die in the coming years trying to answer these questions.These conflicts are made even more savage
by the pressures of globalization. A recent study by Hebrew University
political scientist Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom asserts that while globalization “has
increased interpersonal contact between individuals from culturally diverse
backgrounds,” it has not promoted greater tolerance or acceptance of
difference. Nor has it promoted religious liberty and protection of minority
groups. Just look at the Muslim Brotherhood’s bloody jihad against Coptic Christians in Egypt and ISIS’s even bloodier jihad against Christians, Yazidis, and all minorities in the Middle East. Instead globalization’s freewheeling cultural diversity and upheaval
“induces perceived threat to a hegemonic religion, which leads to more
restrictions on religious freedom.”People really
don’t like having cultural and religious differences shoved in their faces. Shadi Hamid makes the less than inspiring observation, “that the more people interact, the more they dislike each other.” This
is just as true of subgroups – smaller tribal, family, and cult identities – within
an ethno-religious society, as for example the intensifying conflict between
ultra-Orthodox Haredim and the Israeli mainstream over issues of female sexuality and military service. Or the conflict over LGBTQ rights and transgender bathrooms in the United States. Such subcultures can live together peacefully in the same nation if they are given enough autonomy and breathing space to follow their own customs and mores and develop their own communal institutions, and eschew the urge to impose their will on the rest of the nation. Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart wrote that “subcultures with widely divergent outlooks and interests may coexist without necessarily being in conflict. Conflict arises only when they are in contact with each other.” We need to accept that some differences, especially those of blood and faith, are simply too intractable to be bridged. Contrary to the liberal ideal of all people coming together to sing Kumbaya and celebrate their diversity, the best we can hope for in many ethnically and religiously divided societies is a sort of “voluntary apartheid” where the different groups try to keep out of each others’ faces.

The clash of civilizations. Charles Martel stops the Islamic invasion of Francia at the Battle of Poitiers, October 10, 732. Wikipedia.

that
increasing awareness of diverse cultures, ideas and traditions as a result of
globalization increases the perception of threat to religious, cultural and
national integrity and results in a backlash that manifests itself in distrust
of and even aggressive attitudes towards alien cultures and lifestyles.
Globalization thus creates a threat to the sense of group integrity, which in
turn leads to fears of loss of identity and the sense of a disintegrating
community and generates strong resistance towards other value systems, such as
other religions.

In fact globalization is provoking its
opposite: a re-tribalization of much of the world. Faced with moral chaos
through the overthrow of age-old customs and values by globalization, people
are falling back on their primal tribal identities. Or to borrow Tom Friedman’s
metaphor, people are rejecting the Lexus for the Olive Tree. Ethnic street gangs, usually linked to
the drug trade, are the new tribes of urban America’s economic and spiritual wastelands. God Himself, Ralph Peters writes, is being re-tribalized. “Far from monolithic, both the Muslim
and Christian faiths are splintering, with radical strains emerging that reject
the globalization of God and insist that His love is narrow, specific, and
highly conditional.” This is not a recipe for peaceful coexistence.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

By Michael KaplanBret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal has long been one of my favorite columnists. He
talks more sense on foreign policy issues like the threat of radical Islam or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than a whole conga
line of bloviating pundits. (See, for example, here,
here,
here, here, and here.)
This has, to Stephens’s credit, earned him the overheated hatred of the Left. (See these examples from the left-wing anti-Semitic website Mondoweiss, here, here, here.)So I was very disappointed when Stephens launched into a tirade
against Jacksonian America on a May 29 Fareed Zakaria GPS panel. (GPS transcript here.)Stephens, usually the conservative on a GPS panel, descends here into the same liberal internationalist contempt for the people of flyover country—reviling the rabble—typical of host Fareed Zakaria:

I most
certainly will not vote for Donald Trump. I will vote for the least left-wing
opponent to Donald Trump and I want to make a vote that makes sure he is the
biggest loser in presidential history since, I don’t know, Alf Landon or going
back further.

It’s important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this
kind of ethnic quote “conservatism” or populism, be so decisively rebuked that
the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that
they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any
way, shape or form.

So they have to learn a lesson in the way perhaps Democrats
learned a lesson from McGovern in ’72. George Will has said let’s have him lose
in 50 states. Why not Guam, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia too.

This sounds too much like the smears
against Jacksonians as stupid, ignorant, racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobes, xenophobes, and
Islamophobes that’s the stock-in-trade of the Left. Just read any article in
Salon, the Huffington Post, or watch any episode of Real Time
with Bill Maher. In calling for Trump voters to be taught a lesson they will never forget, Bret Stephens displays an elite contempt for the intelligence and interests of much of the American public. Rush Limbaugh observes that Stephens, speaking for the elites and the establishment, is telling the base, “you people are gonna have to get your minds right. You’re gonna have to learn how big a bunch of screw-ups you are.” While Matthew Continetti notes that Republicans are unsure whether they should mock and insult Trump supporters or show them some respect. I should not have been surprised. Sadly bashing the
base and reviling the rabble is now a tactic of the conservative Never Trump movement too.Stephens’s tirade makes it clear that the tension between Jacksonians and movement conservatives in the Republican Party has morphed into a very public and hostile schism. As Walter Russell Mead put it, “Jacksonian voters are less dogmatic and less conservative than some of their would-be political representatives care to acknowledge. Jacksonians like Social Security and Medicare much more than most Republican intellectuals, and they like immigration and free trade much less.” The Never Trump movement is driven not just by personal hostility to Donald Trump but even more by a fear and loathing of Jacksonian America as fierce as any on the Left. And Jacksonian voters in this GOP primary season have said loud and clear that they don’t want intellectual conservatives like Bret Stephens, anymore than they want liberal progressive elites, telling them what to think, how to feel, and who to vote for.